A poor person looking up at my residence could mistake it for one of the barns belonging to the rich man Jesus talked about—the one who didn't know his soul was buried beneath all that corn and sorghum.

A shepherd’s staff has a crook for drawing the sheep away from danger, and a blunt end for prodding them toward places they would rather not go. This week’s texts embrace the tension between the two in the shepherd’s role.

As we encounter the post-resurrection Jesus in this week’s Gospel, brokenness and disappointment permeate—brokenness as thick as the morning mist off the Sea of Galilee, disappointment as pungent as the smell of fish.

Journalist Chris Herlinger teams up with Paul Jeffrey, a United Methodist pastor and photojournalist, to tell stories of people who suffer from hunger and who work to combat it. The causes of hunger across the world—war, climate change, sexism, colonialism, political wrangling, unemployment—are woven into individual stories of those who are poor and hungry.

McMinn, a sociologist and co-owner of a small farm, presumes a certain level of privilege among her readers: choose heirloom seeds; eat only fair trade chocolate; avoid plastic food containers; and buy eggs “from a local source, if possible, and/or from chickens raised outside eating grass and bugs.” Still, this book is an enticing reflection on the sacramental nature of preparing and eating meals.